Barts are SOOOOOOOOO expensive!

Holy Schmidt! I need two Bartolini pickups and am floored by their prices. I guess when your that good you can ask for almost whatever you want. My purchase will have to be delayed til I can gather a few more bucks unfortunately.

I've got bart triple coils in my DPCustom and they sound great. I should note I also have the NTMB-18 preamp, and when I play my bass in passive mode the output can be a bit weak, but they still sound good. I think they were designed with an active preamp in mind.

I agree, Bart pickups, are built to work with Bart preamps. It has been my experience that most cross company mixing of electronics generally ends up working out poorly. The impedences, voicings, etc, are designed to be handled by their own preamps. There are exception to this of course.

Oh, and I LOVE Bartolini Pickups, I've tried EMGs and Basslines, and will never leave my Barts.

You can download the pricelist from www.bartolini.net . It really depends on what you want as to how much it costs. Do you want 2-band? 3-band? push/pull passive? Midrange frequency switch? Volume-volume or volume-blend? How many pots can you put on your bass (if you don't want to start drilling)? List prices range from $130-$200, and they usually retail for considerably less than that.

Originally posted by brewer9 So, let me see if I understand all this. Not only do I have to get Bart pickups, I also have to get a new Bart preamp to make them sound right? How much are those?

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It depends. Is your bass active or passive? If passive then the passive Bartolinis will sound fine. The thing about using only Bart preamps with Bart pickups is debatable, too. I put a Bartolini P pickup in a Fender P-Lyte and it sounded great with the Fender preamp.

"Emg preamps are made for low impedeance pickups, and Barts. are a high imp. pickup. "

I don't agree with this statement either. I put a EMG preamp in a Yamaha passive bass, with the stock high impedence pickups, and it sounded great. EMG says on their web site that they will work with either active (lo-imp) or passive (hi-imp) pickups.

I setup as bass with a Bart MM pickup and an EMG humbucker with a EMG Preamp. The Emg pickup sound fine, but the Bart had NO volume. So I guess as long as you are not mixing the two pickups you are fine.

Originally posted by GrooveDude ok then would the Barts work on a Fender american Jazz deluxe V?

I think the model number is 9W4. They would work with my pre amp right?

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With the 9W4 (I think the 5-string version is 9W5 actually?), string spacing is very important because there are individual coils for each string. So make sure that wherever you order them from takes measurements of your bass, or at least knows that what they're ordering will work exactly.